Archive for the ‘Landscape Photography’ Category

You need one of these… you have one of these… whether you know it or not…

The secret is in the photoshop “Photomerge” panorama machine… Figure it out you will love the results…

Here we have a photo which would normally be made with a 35mm wide angle lens (on a full frame 35mm digital camera). But instead I have pieced together 75 photos taken with a 200mm lens…

Because this is a 2 gigabyte file (or more) you can zoom in and see people climbing the mountain from 5 1/2 to 6 miles away (Canon 70 to 200mm L lens 1/640th at f10)Here are some other multi shot panoramas made with telephoto lenses (mostly an 85mm f1.8 Canon which I think is the perfect panorama lens).

Young and old trees… The real benefit on this panorama was adjusting the focus closer on the right hand part to make the bark come into focus.

Using and 85mm lens gives me a wider view with a 3 shot panorama and I avoid the wide angle perspective of the background being really far away.

This is a 7 shot 85mm wide angle view. I did not want the mountain to be small in the photo like a wide angle lens would have done. So I used my wide view telephoto and photo shop’s “photomerge”.

I did not want the Mountain (Rainier) to recede into the distant (small) background as it would with a wide angle lens. So this is a 6 or 7 shot 85mm wide view panorama.

Recently Photomatix made an export preset to send multiple files to Photomatix to be compiled into a floating point 32 bit file. Then it automatically re imports to Lightroom and you now have 11 or 12 stops of exposure latitude to work with in crafting the “perfect” file. Without all the HDR crap that comes from running the files through regular HDR software. This sample was 5 shots combined into one and then manipulated for final results.

Several people have written me about these photos…. asking how to: If you have ever read the first edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook it starts by saying “…first stand in front of the stove…”. So that means you need to be in the right place at the right time. These were made within a few minutes of each other from pretty much the same location. Both with a Canon 1Ds Mark2. Both with a 70 to 200mm lens. The boat was ISO 400 hand held at f9 with 1/80th of a second shutter. The Pilings were ISO 640 at f 4 at 1/50th of a second 17 minutes later, March 16, 2012. This is an old 1997 lens with no stabilization or I might have had it on… I usually shoot 3 to 5 shots rapidly to make sure I get a sharp on in these hostile lighting situations.

Before: Here are the initial RAW files of these two photos.

Settings:

For the Boat here are the Lightroom settings: Basic, Profile, Brush, HSL, and graduated filters, if any:

I wasn’t going to make any pictures today… But it was a perfect day… slight breeze, 73 degrees, a couple clouds to break up the monotone blue sky.

Sam and I frequent this park since it’s at the end of dead end street and no cars can drive through… He sniffs around until he is content, finds a stick to chew on or a mole to dig up…. Dog Heaven, I suspect. The only downside is once in a while he thinks it’s cool to chase after a bike rider and scare them….Doofus!

People have been coming to this location for decades to snap their photos with 8 x 10 view cameras, 4×5’s 2 1/4’s, 35mm’s, digital snappers and now camera phones… (Wait, did you notice a trend toward lesser and lesser quality?)

Why? Mostly they are not seeking a quality professional photograph. They are only seeking a memory…. And in that case, any rough image will do….

Not me; I can’t stand crappy images. I want something to look at with the idea that I might see something different every time I look at it…. The concept is “transcendence”.

This is when the image transcends the medium and you feel as though you are looking at the concept (the essence of the thing (if a real “thing’ even exists)).

Granite Falls, WA is known for the falls, of course, the only Shinto Shrine in North America, big meth labs, and the mountain loop highway where murderers seem to like to drop off their victims…. The scenery is nice but perhaps you should be armed to cover yourself up here in this neck of the woods?